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sat like a granite statue. Then she was around the table, in his lap, kissing
him.
"Farrago destroyed," Vince Grant said. "But it doesn't look like the
Invid are coming after us; something's happening."
The rest of the Sentinels stood around him, repressing their questions;
they had already learned that it was bedlam when they all talked at once.
They were gathered in a deactivated GMU; the Praxian requirement that
all mecha power down during the meeting in the castle had been an unexpected
godsend.
Is this where our luck turns! Gnea wondered.
The Invid fleet above suddenly let forth a myriad of minor sensor
"paints," then accelerated for superluminal.
The small observation force of Pincers and Scouts and armored Shock
Troopers swept down confidently to take up their places. They quartered the
globe that was Praxis. They isolated the important civic-commercial centers,
and came in for landings.
The VTs rose up to meet them, having received the word that the Regent
was gone. Wolff's Hovertanks fired as Gladiators, or flew on back thrusters as
Battloids, dragging the enemy from the air. Again there was that total
environment of warfare, so insane-and yet so emphatic that it seemed to the
fighters that it was the only time they were truly alive.
"Skull Ten, you got a bogey; scissor right!"
"Skull Six, Skull Six, scissoring; get 'im off my back, Max!"
And the GMU cannon fired, its first round hitting the Invid command
ship. There would be no distress call to the Regent.
The Invid threw themselves into the engagements with utter ferocity. But
they were met by young Earth soldiers who were angry about Karbarra and
confused and scared about Praxis: in a certain sense, the Invid had made their
enemies too scared to give in and too scared to lose.
Neither side could withdraw, and so the fighting went on. One by one,
the VTs fell, despite their high kill ratio. The mecha hunted one another
across Praxis, the VTs using up ordnance and fuel. Both Rick and Max were
forced to land when their mecha began to lose power; Miriya had been forced to
eject earlier, her VT too shot up to stay in the air.
When the Invid were also forced to take to the ground, the Destroids and
the Wolff Pack moved in, with other Sentinels on Hovercycles and in flitters,
and riding whatever else they could get into the air. The Invid still had the
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advantage of numbers, but the Hovertanks and REF irregulars were comparatively
fresh. In a half-dozen separate, desperate actions, the Invid were surrounded
and annihilated, but at terrible cost.
In the aftermath, the principal Sentinels gathered-stunned and bloodied
by what they had abruptly endured and realized what had happened to them.
The two or three surviving VTs had landed, spent, no longer capable of
lifting off Praxis. Only a handful of Hovertanks and Destroids had survived
the no-quarter fighting.
Hundreds were dead, in addition to the thousands who had perished with
Farrago. The GMU was their only resource; they had no way of communicating
with Tirol, or any other potential source of rescue.
Bela came by to help a weary Jack to his feet as he sat near the GMU; he
had barely escaped his burning Hovertank, and it looked like he was plain old
leg infantry again, at least for the foreseeable future.
He was filthy and tired. He had just come in from two sleepless days and
nights of recon patrol, trying to make sure there were no Invid left and to
find something, anything, that would help the Sentinels get out of their
deadend dilemma. And he and his squad had come back empty-handed.
Bela was leading Halidarre, one of the few operating mecha left.
"Admiral Hunter wants to see you, old son," she said. He groaned wearily as
she pulled him up, and shouldered his Wolverine.
"Where are you headed?" he asked. She and the Robo-horse were laden with
gear and weapons, and so was Gnea, who was hurrying up to meet her.
"To scout the planet for Hunter, and for myself. Jack, they can't all be
gone." Bela turned and put her hands on his shoulders, Halidarre's rein
drooping from her grasp. Her face, with its hypnotic raptor eyes, held him,
its lines pulled into fierce but frightened lines. "They can't all be gone!"
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